Hand-cutting of beverage garnishes, especially, the hand-cutting of lemon-wedges has been practiced in restaurants and bars for many years with the concern of hand contamination and the cost of time and labor for considerable quantities demanded daily.
Numerous patents disclose devices for cutting citrus fruits into segments. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,243,952 illustrates a triangular cutting blade, controlled by a pinion gear and racks mechanism assembled in the cutter handle, to remove a segment or segments from citrus fruit. U.S. Pat. No. 4,959,903 describes a citrus fruit pulp cutter having a number of spaced arcuate knives to segment and remove the pulp from a half-section of a citrus fruit. U.S. Pat. No. 2,321,725 illustrates a segment-cutting blade that is a piece of bent flat metal wire formed with a cutting edge to separate the pulp from the rind of a citrus fruit.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,452,514 illustrates a fruit cutting apparatus including a two-part blade with a handle to penetrate a citrus fruit and leave a crosscut inside of the fruit, but not cutting the fruit into wedges. U.S. Pat. No. 4,095,518 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,830,151 illustrate a method of cutting a fruit into wedges. Yet neither of these two devices are capable of a cutting a fruit into wedges with crosscuts. Therefore, no prior device cuts a citrus fruit into wedges leaving a crosscut on each, all the above mentioned devices would have limited functions and capabilities.
Accordingly it is the primary object of the present invention to provide a manual operated lemon-wedge cutting machine for the food and beverage industry to solve the existing problems and significantly improve the quality of the beverage garnish. Other citrus fruits such as limes and oranges can also be cut by the same machine.